# Heartbeat Heartbeat is a lightweight daemon that periodically checks the status of your services and determines whether they are available. ## Usage To include Heartbeat in the stack, run Docker Compose from the root of the repository with an additional command line argument referencing the `heartbeat-compose.yml` file: ```console $ docker-compose -f docker-compose.yml -f extensions/heartbeat/heartbeat-compose.yml up ``` ## Configuring Heartbeat The Heartbeat configuration is stored in [`config/heartbeat.yml`](./config/heartbeat.yml). You can modify this file with the help of the [Configuration reference][heartbeat-config]. Any change to the Heartbeat configuration requires a restart of the Heartbeat container: ```console $ docker-compose -f docker-compose.yml -f extensions/heartbeat/heartbeat-compose.yml restart heartbeat ``` Please refer to the following documentation page for more details about how to configure Heartbeat inside a Docker container: [Run Heartbeat on Docker][heartbeat-docker]. ## See also [Heartbeat documentation][heartbeat-doc] [heartbeat-config]: https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/beats/heartbeat/current/heartbeat-reference-yml.html [heartbeat-docker]: https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/beats/heartbeat/current/running-on-docker.html [heartbeat-doc]: https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/beats/heartbeat/current/index.html